The
Burren is a limestone or karst area of County Clare, Republic of Ireland.
It has little surface water as the water which falls disappears quickly
into the grykes (the vertical cracks) which run between the clints
(the flat pavement blocks). The limestone, being quite pure dissolves
almost entirely on weathering so there is little remaining to form
the basis of a soil. This has resulted in few trees, apart from those
planted to shelter farmhouses as in the right background of this photograph.
This prompted a famous outburst by one of Cromwell's generals in 1651,
Edmund Ludlow. "After two days march, without anything remarkable
but bad quarters, we entered into the barony of Burren, of which it
is said, that it is a country where there is not water enough to drown
a man, wood enough to hang one, nor earth enough to bury him".